“I’ll say a little bit more about Alexander’s expressed view that belief is a matter of muscle tension. I’m pretty certain that what he meant, and what I would mean by such a thing, is that when any of us adopt fixed beliefs and fixed ideas, above all it is from the grounds of security and safeguarding ourselves. We think: ‘I believe this has to be so because if it isn’t so, then I don’t know what to do, I don’t know where I am, I don’t know how to proceed, I’m lost. So it must be so.’ And people who believe in that way – who have fixed beliefs in that way – certainly do at the same time manifest habitual patterns of muscle tension in the body, largely of contraction…

Now when I say belief I mean fixed belief. I mean belief that you are unwilling to put to the test, belief that you’re afraid of having upset. Because of course naturally we all have beliefs, and as we grow older our beliefs do tend to get more strongly established. I’ve got very strong beliefs indeed at my age, but I hope that, still now, I am willing to have them put to the test. I hope I’m not frightened of having my beliefs proved to be wrong and so forth. I try to adopt an open attitude so that somebody can come along and demonstrate this and that, which I believe is wrong. Well then, fine. Thank you very much, now we have a better basis to proceed on.”
(Taken from a talk on “Belief is a Matter of Muscle Tension”)